Beast Morphers: First Cause
by Stormasius
Summary: (Oneshot.) When Devon goes to Coral Harbour's Riptide Gym to try out the Karate Class behind his Dad's back, things get more than a little heated between him and the instructor by the name of Blaze. (Episode 1 Riptide Gym fight scene with more context and perspectives to it and a new ending.)


Beast Morphers: First Cause

**Disclaimer - Power Rangers: Beast Morphers is owned by Hasbro.**

Coral Harbour's Riptide Gym, a popular exercise centre for the youths who call the City home. Within the Gym, whilst some went about their regular workout sessions, at this time of the day the Gym was predominantly taken up by a fairly large Karate Class.

"Good energy guys." The blonde haired instructor spoke as he walked between the students who were practicing basic front punches, striking head height. "Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Good!" He continued, instructing them to strike with each number he said. "Nine, ten." He finished as he came to the back row where something caught his eye.

A certain new member wearing a brown belt and the faint sound of music could be heard playing as the brown belt displayed what looked to be more like dance than Karate. "O-One, two." He said as he walked up to the misbehaving brown belt and shook him on the shoulder. "Hey, buddy." He said in a low tone, favouring to keep the issue as calm as possible.

"What's that?" The brown belt asked as he removed his earphones and turned to face the instructor that had just interrupted him.

"We're not disturbing you are we?"

Wapping his earphones up up, the brown belt could see he was in trouble. "No, not at all, I was just um." He paused as the instructor folded his arms. The brown belt pointed his finger casually toward the rest of the class. "I see, that was sarcasm." He finished as he tucked the earphones away in his hand.

The instructor wasn't pleased with how the brown belt had acted up until now, Completely disregarding the class and doing his own thing. In his eyes, if the brown belt was going to continue 'training' like this, it would be a waste of time for the both of them. "The only way you're gonna learn Karate, is by following what I do; and practicing."

His misbehaving new student gave a quick nod of his head. "Totally agree! Just waiting on you to teach moves that are, a little bit more…" He gave a shrug of his shoulders. "Challenging?"

At this point, the instructor was more than annoyed. Sure, he knew all too well how basics could be boring and repetitive when you have to do the same ones over and over again, hundreds of times at least until you could learn more challenging techniques. Still, for him it was infuriatingly arrogant of the brown belt to dismiss _any_ basic technique as not worth his time. "You want moves that're more challenging, is that it?"

"That'd be great!" The brown belt said enthusiastically, unaware of the anger that had been building up in his instructor to this point.

Without warning the black belt, swung his leg into a front hook kick aiming for his now opponent's head. Something in him boiled over as he unleashed the technique. His opponent quickly ducked under the attack, barely having time to see the kick heading for him.

As for the brown belt, he didn't suspect that it was anything more than a badly distanced technique yet as he rose back up. If that had connected though, it could've done some serious damage, he'd have to be more alert now in case there were any more wild techniques like that his instructor had planned. "That was real close." He said cautiously.

"Blaze!" Another instructor called to the first, prompting him to turn his head. The instructor was another young man and by his side was another instructor, this time a young woman, her face expressing concern. The rest of the class had noticed his attack and ceased training, in case the incident escalated and got out of hand. "Leave him alone." The second instructor told Blaze.

Blaze put his palm out to the other black belts, who were just out of arm's reach. "Back off, Ravi." He smirked to his peer and looked back to his opponent. He decided it would be best to teach him a lesson in respecting his teacher.

Without warning, Blaze snapped a quick but powerful front kick, sending his opponent backwards as he followed up with a side thrusting kick to the knee, which the brown belt narrowly dodged. Turning back around to face his foe, Blaze sent out two front punches, the first missed whilst the brown belt caught the second punch, his hand on Blaze's forearm and his other hand locked onto Blaze's shoulder. Reacting quickly, Blaze rolled his opponent's hand off his shoulder and knocked the brown belt's grip off with a knife edge strike.

Continuing his offensive, Blaze let off a stomach height roundhouse, his opponent skipping backwards out of the way. As Blaze struck with a backfist, the brown belt leapt backward onto his hands, bouncing off of the and jumping back onto his feet in a crouched stance. Before he could regain a good stance, Blaze followed up with a roundhouse kick, aiming for his lower leg.

Reacting quickly, the brown belt flipped out of the way on his hand, making distance between them and giving him the time he needed to get into a stance as Blaze pressed his assault. Attacking with a front kick, Blaze's kick was stopped before it connected by an X block. Not one to be stopped, Blaze continued with a roundhouse to the head. Unfortunately for him, his opponent stopped it with a knife hand block. Getting impatient now, Blaze batted the block away and followed up with a head height front punch. Twisting out of the way, the brown belt dodged and then grabbed Blaze's forearm

Yet the advantage was short lived as Blaze ripped his arm out of it with a repurposed backwards elbow strike and used the position of his arm, now cocked behind his body, to increase the power of his next strike and he unleashed yet another front punch, his opponent spinning out of the way just before it connected. Turning around once again to meet his foe, Blaze readied his block as the brown belt got into a cat stance. Moving in again, Blaze snapped out another heel connecting side thrusting kick. Surprising everyone though, the brown belt leapt up into the air and over Blaze, landing onto the mats behind Blaze.

Seeing and opening while his back was turned, Blaze attacked with another front punch striking to the head, only it wasn't and opening as the brown belt span around and gripped Blaze's wrist and elbow, ensuring that at least for a little while that Blaze couldn't continue the attack.

Exhausted from the relentless attacks, the brown belt sucked in some air. "Careful, someone's gonna get hurt."

"And that someone is you!" Blaze declared as he used the time to recover enough strength to rip his arm downwards and out of the hold.

Continuing the fight, Blaze followed up with a backwards roundhouse kick, connecting with the gut and sending the brown belt stumbling backwards to another set of mats outside of the training area to a steel beam which he rested again. Pressing the advantage, Blaze ran forwards, readying a front punch to the head.

Seeing it coming, his opponent moved out of the way as Blaze let the punch loose, hitting the beam with a clang. Yelling out in pain, Blaze shook his fist. As the brown belt gave a cocky smirk. And raised his arms. "Tried to warn you!"

Over by the students spectating another young woman with blonde hair and wearing a purple belt looked on, her thumbs tucked into her belt and hands resting on it as she observed the fight. She felt that if any other black belt saw what was going on, this fight would've ended a while ago and both would've been punished for their actions by now. Unfortunately, the only two that could match up to Blaze didn't want to physically intervene.

Back in the fight, Blaze gritted his teeth, breathing heavy now as he kicked up a pair of long wooden batons, that were resting on a bag near his feet, and caught them in his hands. He highly doubted that his foe had any Kobudō training and wouldn't be able to defend against the weapons either. Though given how well he had defended up until now, it wasn't certain how this fight would end.

Bringing them around in an arcing motion, Blaze's style became much more aggressive as the brown belt ducked under the swing and rolled backwards away from Blaze. Switching to a defensive stance, the brown belt blocked Blaze's next blow with an inside block and proceeding to block the next few blows from different angles before jumping backwards away from a double strike to his front leg. Injured from the impact force of the weapons, the brown belt rubbed his forearms and groaned.

From the sidelines, the young woman who had been at Ravi's side called out to try and defuse the situation before things got any worse. "Blaze, stop it!" Unfortunately her words were lost on him as the red haze of combat had clouded over his sense of reason and all he cared about now was beating his opponent at all costs.

Going in for another attack, Blaze was caught off guard as his foe caught the first baton, twisting it down toward the ground and twisting Blaze's arm in the process. Trying to pull it away and running backwards, the brown belt brought the weapon to the ground where he wrestled it out of Blaze's hand. Rolling backwards and onto his feat, he span the baton around in his hand, ready to even the score. He charged at Blaze, who also did so in turn, exchanging a couple of blows and knocking the other stick out of Blaze's hand and into the air.

Catching it as it descended, the brown belt span around and brought the two batons to Blaze's neck in a technique similar to an X block. At last, it looked like the situation was defused and the brown belt had won the fight. Everyone gave relieved sighs as the fight came to and end.

"Okay I'll admit, a couple of your moves were a little… Challenging." The Victor said as he caught his breath.

"Devon!" A deep and angry voice called from across the Gym.

The brown belt named Devon turned around, an uneasy feeling coming over him as he saw a tall and well dressed man standing with his hands behind his back, looking on disapprovingly.

"Hey dad." He said with an awkward smile.

"His dad's the Mayor." The female black belt pointed out.

"Look, I can explain!" Devon tried to protest, knowing the look on his Dad's face all too well.

"I don't want to hear excuses, I expected better from you. You are leaving. Now!" The Mayor raised his voice.

Devon sighed and turned back to Blaze. "Thanks for the lesson Blaze." He said, throwing the batons back to Blaze as he left with the Mayor.

Turning his back to Devon, he walked up to Ravi who looked on disapprovingly. "What was that Blaze?"

"He wanted a tough lesson, so I gave him one." Blaze replied bluntly.

"You know as well as I not to go that hard on someone." Ravi berated him as he clapped his hand onto his shoulder. "Next time think before you punch, or else someone could seriously get hurt and it'd be on you Blaze."

"Hey guys, it's nearly time, you coming?" The young woman with a black belt called over as she picked up her Gym bag.

Ravi nodded and smiled over to her. "Just a minute Roxy!" He said before turning back to Blaze. "Listen, just take some time to cool off first, alright? We've all got a big day ahead of us after all, we wouldn't want anything going wrong because someone wasn't paying attention."

**|Beast Morphers|**

_Kobudō - Fully known as Okinawan Kobudō, it refers to the weapon systems of Okinawan Martial Arts. Whilst removed from most modern styles of Karate that prefer to focus exclusively on empty handed fighting, some schools still teach is, most commonly older schools and styles._

**Thank you for reading this fic. This was my first attempt at writing up a fic that actually focuses exclusively on Canon characters. This is a bit of a semi fix fic for this scene in Beast Morphers. I'm loving this new season (best one in years) and apart from the fight scene in the Gym between Blaze and Devon, the first episode was in my opinion is pretty perfect. In all honesty this barely diverges from the Canon scene but I wanted to add the context of thoughts and feelings and add a couple of perspectives and changes to it to make it seem realer for me.**

**That's because in my opinion, in a real dojo, something like that would never have happened outside of a sparring match that gets out of hand. I felt that if my Sensei saw something like this happen at his dojo, he'd take both their belts faster than one of them could throw a punch. This is all coming from someone who has spent half his life training in Karate so hopefully I know what I'm talking about. That said, I enjoyed going into detail with the fight and breaking down what each technique thrown was, which was pretty hard since in the episode each move is done in pretty quick succession and it comes as a blur half the time, but that goes to show that they had some good technique. Hopefully I didn't miss any or mistake any technique for any other one. I kept all the techniques in English aside from when referring to Kobudō (since it was quicker to explain at the end) just for those that wouldn't know what they would be in their original Japanese names.**

**That said, I wanted to point out that the name I gave the story 'First Cause' is actually the English translation of Taikyoku, a series of Kata and often the first series of Kata you'd learn in Karate depending on which style you practice. It's philosophical meaning is that 'there is no first strike in Karate' and that you shouldn't be the one to land the first blow in a fight and that's why I chose this title. Okay with my little philosophy lesson over and to my regular readers, don't worry, I've got more on the way for my long term stories. Once again though thanks for reading this story everyone!**


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